


The Dating History of Joan Thursday

by LadyAJ_13



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Asexual Joan, At least I think it can be read that way, Canon Compliant, Covers series 1 - 6, F/M, Friendship, POV Joan Thursday, Self-Doubt, Warning for canon events such as Joan's miscarriage, aromantic Joan, nothing explicit though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:54:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27671647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: There have been a few relationships in her life. None of them ended well.
Relationships: Endeavour Morse & Joan Thursday, Joan Thursday/Other(s)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 15





	The Dating History of Joan Thursday

_ Michael Jones _

Michael owned a motorbike. Well, a scooter. He was also somewhat obsessed with her, to the point that most of their year were convinced he’d worked four summers to save up and buy that scooter purely based on a comment she’d made when they were twelve. 

She doesn't even remember the comment.

Michael was fine, of course. They went to the same primary school, and were partners on a geography project once - he’d actually pulled his weight, which was a pleasant surprise. He had mousy brown hair, freckles which he hated, stood exactly one inch taller than her and always wanted to be a milkman, like his dad.

They dated for a month just before school ended. She’d wanted a ride on his scooter, and she’d wanted a boyfriend too, like her friends had. They’d gone to the pictures and he bought her a squash and a packet of bonbons. He’d kissed her, tasting of sugar, and held her hand. And on the last day of school he’d dragged her round the back of the bike sheds, and instead of trying to put his hand up her top, he proposed.

She’d run away.

It wasn’t her finest moment.

She never told anyone. It got around that they’d broken up, but people just shrugged and moved on. She wonders sometimes what happened to Michael. She hopes he made it as a milkman.

_ Peter Jakes _

She hadn’t picked the Lamb and Flag. It's a copper hangout, and generally she likes to stay away from those for obvious reasons; besides, they’re not too keen on gaggles of girls taking up their tables. It’s a man’s pub, a drinker’s pub, and she has no interest in being where she’s not wanted, suffering dirty looks for trying to order a gin and tonic. But it was Erin’s birthday, and she was hoping to land a husband before her next one.

She’d heard her friends giggling about him, dark hair, sharp smile, before she looked up and realised who they were talking about. It was just Jakes, from the station. His suits were okay, she supposed, but she always thought he looked rather underfed and pointy, and he had a way of leaning that seemed too calculated to be real. Like everything about him was a facade. There was something a bit elegant about the smoking, she had to admit; the slim cigarettes and the twist of his wrist as he flicked his lighter... but she wasn’t sure it was worth the whispers.

She stared long enough that he looked up, and that was it - she was caught. She’d blushed, wiggling her fingers in a sheepish wave, and groaned inwardly as he made his way to their table.

She was never really sure how it happened, but over the course of another couple of drinks and under the supportively excited grins of her friends, she’d agreed to a date. That had been an awkward evening, Jakes - Peter - in full flirt mode that made her want to laugh at him rather than fall at his feet, only it wasn’t polite. They had little in common except her dad - not a top date topic - and he’d tried to put his hands where she hadn't wanted them, and all in all, it was something of a relief when the rest of Oxford City Police crashed through the door.

_E. Morse_

Morse had rescued her that night. The white knight waiting in the wings to deliver stranded women back home. 

She liked Morse. Oh, he was pretty, of course - a kind of young-looking, refined type of handsome that she was never sure if it was right to point out or not, slightly too feminine, perhaps, for comments to be appreciated. But it wasn’t that really; she liked how easy he was to tease, how she could pull out a stammer or a self-sacrificing comment just by the way she applied her lipstick.

She thought about him asking her out. He never did, and in a way, she liked him for that too. So different to the pushiness of some men, their flirtation never stepped beyond the bounds. She knew it was probably just respect for her dad, but even so, she liked slanting her eyes his way with a smirk, knowing he’d merely blush and look away.

_ Paul Marlock _

Paul was persistent. She almost admired him for it, like a dog that didn’t know when it was beaten. He seemed to pick her as a special favourite, and - well, she’ll admit she preened a bit under the attention. Paul was connected. He was smooth, generous, good-looking, and all the girls wanted him. She got into the bingo on his arm, and he sent her drinks and snacks all night and caught her eye with a wink whenever he pulled ‘made in heaven, 67’.

He was also someone she didn’t want to be alone with. She couldn’t work out if his persistence was a front, or if he’d turn even pushier in private, so it made her careful. She borrowed one of her mum’s sharper hat pins and kept it in her purse, just in case. Paranoia. It comes from being a copper’s daughter.

He was fun though. At a table with all her girls, she didn’t mind him pressed to her side, his arm around her shoulders. He was chatty, funny, a guaranteed good night out. It was harmless. Until it wasn’t. Until it led to Ronnie shot dead on a cold floor.

_ E. Morse _

He was the last person she’d have expected to see, sneaking out of the house in the pre-dawn light. He looked like she felt, wrecked, and it didn’t quite make sense. He lives this stuff every day, and it wasn’t him who got his friend killed.

His cheek was still marred by blood; cleaned but not healed. She’d felt a rush of affection for him then. Wanted to drag him inside, make a cup of tea and maybe a sandwich. Leave him to fall asleep on their sofa, like he did that other time so long ago, huddled under his own coat. He’d kept her calm. He’d kept her panic down, her attention on him and that damn puzzle, solving some other case until she could breathe again.

He’d talked that gun around until it was pointed at him, not her.

She should love him for that. But she wasn’t something worthy of love. Not his. She was worthy of the Paul Marlocks of this world, so she walked away. Left him looking like his world was ending with barely a pang of her own. And didn’t that just prove it? 

_ Ray Morton _

She set herself up in Leamington Spa. Only, she hadn’t quite thought it through, and the part time job she swung wasn’t really enough to support a flat of her own. She’d brought some cash with her though, her savings, and she used that as well, eeking out an existence.

She met Ray in a pub. He bought her a drink and a packet of crisps, and she hadn’t eaten since the slice of toast at breakfast so she let him stay. He seemed nice enough. He liked her too, enough to take her out for dinner three nights in one week, and she didn’t order the salad like she should have, but he didn’t seem to care.

He was alright, in the beginning. Kind of quiet, kind of distant at times, and he always looked confused rather than amused at her jokes. But he listened to her talk and wined and dined her and - well, he wasn’t a decent man. She worked out fairly quickly there was a wife hidden away somewhere, and no decent man cheats like that. But he wasn’t a  _ bad _ man, he wasn’t a Paul or god forbid a Cole or Peter Matthews, and if the worst in his closet was a penchant for playing away then maybe his level of worthiness fitted with hers.

The first time he came round, she made him tea with the last dregs of milk. He’d pinned her against the fridge afterwards, kisses hot and close, and moved her through to the bedroom. They’d been dating for weeks. He’d waited long enough, he needed to have her, he couldn’t help himself. She let him; it felt like it was time, and she wasn’t going to get the white wedding anyway. She’d been scared and unsure how well she was hiding it, but it turned out okay. When he rolled off her, she sat up and went to put the kettle on again, because it was only quarter past four in the afternoon. 

She remembers thinking that she’d changed. Her life was different now, and yet she’d still run out of milk.

She started letting him help her out with the flat. He had the money, after all, and it meant she could start eating a solid three meals a day again, even though he didn’t take her out anymore - too dangerous, too likely they’d get caught. He popped in when he could, and he always brought flowers and kissed her hello. It was fine. 

She wasn't in love, but that was for the best anyway.

_E. Morse_

It was stupid to call him. Stupider still to let him in.

As soon as he was inside her flat, all the shame she hadn't noticed she was pushing down reared up. There’s a word they use for people like her, people who let a man pay their bills and sleep in their bed, no love or desire to round it out and make it something half-palatable.

Shaken and nauseous, she let a part of the truth spill out. Morse never tried anything with her. Maybe they could have - but not now, too late.

She never went to the doctor for a test, but she’d missed two months of bleeding, spent weeks wishing for it and sitting on the toilet for hours, tears streaming and fist crammed in her mouth, only to breathe deep and fix her make-up in time for the turn of a key in the door.

It’s Morse’s fault. If he’d just asked.

She wishes it was. 

_ Ray Morton _

It all went wrong after that. Her father, his disappointment, Ray’s bleeding face. Ray shouted at her that evening, shocked her with his fury, his hand an open slap across her face that sent her reeling. She thought of her old purse with the hat pin she’d long ago slipped back into her mother’s jewellery box. How it wouldn’t matter anyway, because she was tied to Ray, this absence of blood that meant too much.

He hit her again, sent her stumbling, his ring catching and drawing forth the wrong blood. If only it was so simple. Maybe it was.

She ran.

_E. Morse_

She ran to him. Because he knew, and because she had nowhere else. She trusted him to shelter her, and the train ride was long and cold and she only needed a minute, somewhere to think, and she’d be on her way. London, perhaps. Somewhere she could fix things.

He looked at her like she was everything. The pain in his eyes, seeing where her skin had darkened with bruises, the way he joined the dots and the tight line of his mouth. The anger that was packed away, because she needed him there, not driving off to Leamington on a revenge mission.

“Marry me.”

She will remember those two words for the rest of her life. How easy it would have been, to let him save her. But she couldn’t, because love for him might grow as it hadn’t with Ray, but it wasn’t in her now and it was in him. And he knew some, but not enough. Not everything.

She took his money. Because that’s what she does.

_ Ray Morton _

She shouldn’t have come back. That much was clear as soon as the door snicked shut. She had thought Ray was angry before.

It occurred to her, very vividly as if time stood still for a second, that she really was incredibly sheltered. She has had a gun held to her head, she has seen death, she has suffered and cried and she had never, not until that moment, seen such anger.

He knocked her about. It sounds so simple like that, doesn't it? Like kneading bread or pastry until smooth, so every day. It is, for some people. Not for her. Her father would rather cut his hand off than raise it to her face. 

When Ray walked out, she was curled in a ball on the floor. Her stomach hurt, and her knickers felt wet, and she had a bone deep certainty that something was very wrong. Ray expected her to stay. He thought she’d be there when he got back from work. She wasn’t.

She dreamt about Morse. Later, the hospital said her husband had visited; she’d wrangled her aching head until she could politely turn the conversation and work out who they meant, and then wondered how much of it was a dream after all. Her purse still held some of Morse’s money; meant as an escape, a lifeline she’d dropped. She tucked it in an envelope, posted it, and went home.

_E. Morse (and Claudine)_

Being back in Oxford was like slipping into an old pair of shoes. Slightly too worn and sloppy, but better than new leather which pinches toes and blisters heels. 

She smoothed things over with her family. Then she ran into Morse at the lipstick counter of all places, and it let her dig down deep and pull out her old self, the teasing Joan, the one that likes to needle Morse for the reactions he gives. He didn’t blush that time, but he did smile. He knew everything about her and he still smiled.

She invited him to her house warming. He probably thought she invited him for him, and she did, really. She’s always liked him, and she owes him so much. Taking him to the roof was a bad idea though; he got that look in his eyes, a pleased little hope that made her blurt out too suddenly about her friend, Claudine.

Claudine is special. They met at a protest, and she’d been drawn to her right away. A group of them had headed down the pub afterwards, and Claudine’s stories were exciting, exotic things that had everyone eating out of the palm of her hand. As people drifted away, she found herself next to Claudine with the other occupants of the table otherwise engaged.

She felt frumpy, suddenly. Dowdy. Next to this French photographer with the world at her feet, she was nothing but a confused little girl; failed relationship, miscarriage, no career, filling her days with causes because maybe that’ll give her something to hold on to. But Claudine wanted to know about her causes, and about her - when she ran out of stories she pulled out the one of the bank heist, staring too hard at Claudine’s pleased, shocked face to banish the memory of Ronnie’s, blank and empty. 

Claudine, she thought then, was the perfect distraction for Morse; beautiful, enticing, educated. She could see Claudine disappearing off to her far-flung assignments, Morse burrowing into his cases as he tends to do, and then the fireworks when they resurfaced at the same time. 

She can’t have Morse. Doesn’t want him, really. And neither he nor Claudine would make a particularly good long-term partner. But she thought they might have been perfect for each other.

_ Carl Jennings _

She got a job as a temp. It meant meeting a lot of people, getting a lot of experience, and there were a few things that fit well with her new-found code, things she might want to return to if permanent openings came up. There was also Carl Jennings.

Carl was a year younger than her, slender - someone less forgiving may have used the term weedy - with thick-rimmed spectacles and an encyclopaedic knowledge of both roman history and Oxford City football club. He took a fancy to her, letting her pick from the open roles first, and the girls in the office encouraged him until he asked her on a date. In front of everyone. To turn him down would mean humiliation, so she said yes.

In the restaurant, she detailed exactly how this was a friend situation, not a romance one, and that they would be going Dutch. She waited with a steely-eyed squint until he nodded, then asked a question about viaducts to set him running.

Carl turned out to be a bit of a sweetie, really. They’d been having strictly platonic, scrupulously equal lunch dates once a week for a month when he took a single look at the newest temp, Klara, and it was like little Disney birds span around his head. She talked him through how to woo her, and that was that. She thinks they might even be engaged by now.

_ E. Morse _

He asks her on a date. Ambushed on her own doorstep, it almost makes her smile. They do this a lot, seek each other out and pop up unexpectedly. He’s done everything backwards, saving her life, then proposing and now, finally, a date.

She’d love to go for coffee with him. She can picture it: a cosy table in Carfax tower cafe, a pot of tea for two and a slice of their lemon cake. It would be fun, him in this hopeful, lightened mood that suits him so well. 

But she shakes her head and steels herself against the wounded look, standing firm in her denial. It wouldn’t be fair. It would be a beginning, for him, but it wouldn't be for her.

_ Ronnie Box _

She gets a job working at the welfare. It’s hard work, watching the worst happen to so many, but it feels useful. It feels necessary. It makes it worth it.

It’s fun, too, landing Box in it with her father. No matter who’s actually the governor and who’s the underling, she’s sure Box cares for her dad’s opinion, and the look on his face at getting caught ogling his daughter is priceless. 

_E. Morse_

It seems to be a run of bad cases for the police, or cases with kids, at least. Everywhere she turns is Jim Strange, her father, Ronnie Box and Morse. Always, Morse. Lost little girls at village fetes, arson, improper interview procedure, runaways. Bickering in the office in front of her boss, and shouting at him in other people’s gardens, because there’s something about Morse that makes it easy to fight. But then he worked it out, because he’s Morse, so of course he did. He led her right to them despite it all, and the tight knot of worry in her stomach soothed at the shadowy outline of two heads on a park bench.

They get them warmed up in the canteen. She calls it in to Viv, and they bluster their way through correcting the kids on their assumptions, hurts mostly forgotten in their mutual panic now starting to resurface. There’s so much water under that bridge, that they could, would, should be together now - it barely seems worth a denial, but they do. She does. Again.

She takes the kids to the orphanage. She knows they’re not evil places, not like books would have you think. It still feels cold, watching them disappear behind a door and just turning and walking away. She doesn’t think, just moves, because the alternative is going back and that’s crazy - she can’t save them. She can’t bring their parents back from what they’ve done.

She’s both surprised and not, when she looks up to see the frontage of the police station. To complete the picture, Morse is walking down the steps.

The world seems to want to throw them together, but the prospect - once light and sparkling with possibility - is now merely sad. Morse has lost his shine if he ever had it at all. She can imagine their marriage, descending from clever quips into biting remarks, and it would keep her sharp but it would also make her bitter. A lifetime of seesawing between fights and truces.

He’s got that look though, clear even now, beneath the washed out streetlight. Hidden beneath the bile of the past few months he’s hurt; he still likes her. Enough to make him fractured and snarly, enough to make him  _ care. _ He’d haul her out of any situation she needed him to, right now, right as he spits insults and grimaces, he’d switch in a heartbeat and be her white knight again. He’d propose again. He wants her. And this time, even, she’s sure it’s all about her.

And she doesn't. All that feeling, all that emotion, and suddenly she’s blank. Like there’s an empty space inside her where there should be reciprocation. They’ve been through so much there should be more there. She  _ likes _ Morse. Some of the time. But it should be more by now, and if it isn’t, she’s going to have to face up to the possibility that it might never be. She’s come back around to him time and again, and it’s still not working. 

“I don’t love you.”

Morse is silent, looking at her. She feels a strange thickness in her throat at the steadiness of his gaze. 

“I wanted to,” she admits, breath little puffs in the cool night air. She’d thought about it so much. How theirs could be a love story for the ages, star-crossed, with the eventual happy ending everyone thought there should be.

“Right.” He pulls on his ear. It’s his tell, he’s uncomfortable, but she’s not teasing this time, she’s hurting him. 

“I never…” it’s a lot to admit, but it feels unfair not to. It’s not Morse. It’s her. There might be a hundred things she doesn't like about him, but he’s her friend all the same. He’s a good man. He’s been better to her than anyone really should be, and she’s tried not to take advantage of him but she’s not sure she succeeded. “Never felt like that,” she whispers. “I don’t… something’s wrong with me. Or - or different, at least.”

“What about Ray?”

She shakes her head helplessly. She won’t go into that now, the complication of that whole situation. It’s not Ray anyway, he didn’t break her, she was always like this. “No.”

“Right.”

She thinks she should probably leave. He was heading home and she stopped him. There’s probably a bottle somewhere with his name on it for tonight. She wouldn’t mind a drink herself; it’s been a hell of a day. There’s only one thing more she wants to say. 

“I’m sorry.”

He smiles at her; a rueful smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. It’s painfully unfamiliar, and she realises with a pang that he always liked to look at her before, and it lent a truthfulness to the quirk of his lips in even the direst circumstances. She nods, and turns away. The few paces over to the pavement feel like miles.

“Wait!”

She turns. He’s half-moving, like he’d been about to chase after her and thought better of it. 

“Give - give me a month or two. Then, maybe…” he trails off, then lets out a surprised chuckle. “I don’t know what you like to do. Pub? With Strange,” he adds. “And…” he looks like he’s wracking his brain, and she can’t help an amused smile. “Viv Wall? Friends.”

What a collection. It could be fun, if only to watch Morse and Strange attempt to entertain Viv. “Give me a call,” she says, with a shrug and a lopsided smile. “You’ve got my number.”


End file.
